Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 17:1 (Jul 2020)
Article: A Note From Our Editor: “Coronavirus”
Author: John Warwick Montgomery

A Note From Our Editor: “Coronavirus”

John Warwick Montgomery

If you are as sick as I am of receiving virus messages, you will have a tendency to trash this piece without even reading it. I’m not sure that I would blame you, but I hope you won’t. For, mirabile dictu. it actually contains some serious theology.

When I wrote my book, Human Rights and Human Dignity,1 I of course mentioned in passing philosophers of animal liberation such as John Aspinall, who suggested that the world might be better off sans people. One wonders if, at the moment, Aspinall and company are keeping track of their own viral state . . .

Even serious theological operations have been sending messages that boil down to (1) this is an unprecedented situation, (2) we can’t explain it but need to hang in there through courage and prayer, (3) we must maintain family values, (4) don’t forget to wash your hands continually, and (5) the authorities are doing all they can.

Now, I may be wrong, but is there anything non-platitudinous here? Anything that even low-IQ Christian believers would not have thought of on their own?

But then we also receive from these same organisations additional monetary appeals. For example, one such group points out, that, as always, it is holding high Sola Gratia, whilst virtually all evangelicals think that their salvation is dependent, as least in part, on their personal faith-efforts. So, send us another contribution!

We seem to hear Dr Newby Faustus (Ph.D. from an English minor provincial university, a former Polytechnic, that requires no language or comprehensive examinations, but which accepted his thesis in camera on “Law-Gospel Teaching in the Book of Ecclesiasticus”).u Here we overhear Faustus in conversation with one of the writers of this infinite stream of Coronavirus appeals.

FAUSTUS: “Excellent series of e-mail messages to your constituency! You never talk above their heads and you properly treat them like children who need single-syllable instruction during their first week in Sunday School. You tell them nothing that they haven’t already heard more than once through the media and by way of e-mails from similar organisations. You have succeeded in reinforcing the obvious—if not ad infinitum, surely ad nauseam.

“Particularly impressive is your total avoidance of the key questions an unbeliever would be desperately asking: If there is a good God, WHY? Why one person’s financial collapse and not his neighbours? Why this individual’s survival but not that individual’s? Why the death of medical personnel attempting to treat the critically ill?

“Especially helpful is ...